Jeanne of the Marshes Part 40

"She will not see me?" De Brensault asked. "It is possible that I might be able to persuade her."

"You would do more harm than good," the Princess answered decidedly.

"She is terrified just now at the idea. She is in her room shaking like a schoolgirl who is going to be punished. Really, I don't know why I should have been plagued with such a charge. There are so many things I want to do, and I have to stay here to look after Jeanne, because she is too foolish to be trusted with any one else. I want to go to America, and a very dear friend of mine has invited me to go with her and some delightful people on a yachting cruise around the world."

"Then why not use those measures you spoke of?" De Brensault said eagerly. "I shall make Jeanne a very good husband, I a.s.sure you. I shall promise you that in a fortnight's time she will be only too delighted with her lot."

The Princess looked at him thoughtfully.

"I wonder," she said, "whether I could trust you."

"Trust me, of course you could, dear Princess!" De Brensault exclaimed eagerly. "I will be kind to her, I promise you. Be sensible. She would feel this way with any one. You yourself have said so. There can be no more suitable marriage for her than with me. Let us call it arranged.

Tell me what it is that you propose. Perhaps I may be able to help."

"Jeanne is, of course, not of age," the Princess said thoughtfully, "and she is entirely under my control. In England people are rather foolish about these things, but abroad they understand the situation better."

"Why not in Belgium?" De Brensault exclaimed. "We might go to a little town I know of very near to my estates. Everything could be arranged there very easily. I am quite well-known, and no questions would be asked."

The Princess nodded thoughtfully.

"That might do," she admitted.

"Why not start at once?" De Brensault suggested. "There is nothing to be gained by waiting. We might even leave to-morrow."

The Princess shook her head.

"You are too impetuous, my dear Count," she said.

"But what is there to wait for?" he demanded.

"I must see my lawyers first," she answered slowly, "and before I leave London I must pay some bills."

The Count drew a cheque book from his pocket.

"I will keep my word," he said. "I will pay you on account the amount we spoke of."

The Princess opened her escritoire briskly.

"There is a pen and ink there," she said, "and blotting paper. Really your cheque will be a G.o.d-send to me. I seem to have had nothing but expenses lately, and Jeanne's guardians are as mean as they can be.

They grumble even at allowing me five thousand a year."

De Brensault twirled his moustache as he seated himself at the table.

"Five thousand a year," he muttered. "It is not a bad allowance for a young girl who is not yet of age."

The Princess shrugged her shoulders.

"My dear Count," she said, "you do not know what our expenses are.

Jeanne is extravagant, so am I extravagant. It is all very well for her, but for me it is another matter. I shall be a poor woman when I have resigned my charge."

De Brensault handed the cheque across.

"You will not find me," he said, "ungrateful. And now, my dear lady, let us talk about Jeanne. Do you think that you could persuade her to leave London so suddenly?"

"I am going up-stairs now," the Princess said, "to have a little talk with her. Dine with me here to-night quite quietly, and I will tell you what fortune I have had."

De Brensault went away, on the whole fairly content with his visit. The Princess endorsed his cheque, and with a sigh of relief enclosed it in an envelope, rang for a maid and ordered her carriage. Then she went up-stairs to Jeanne, whom she found busy writing at her desk. She hesitated for a moment, and then went and stood with her hand resting upon the girl's shoulder.

"Jeanne," she said, "I think that we have both been a little hasty."

Jeanne looked up in surprise. Her stepmother's tone was altered. It was no longer cold and dictatorial. There was in it even a note of appeal.

Jeanne wondered to find herself so unmoved.

"I am sorry," she said, "if I have said anything unbecoming. You see,"

she continued, after a moment's pause, "the subject which we were talking about did not seem to me to leave much room for discussion."

"There is no harm in discussing anything," the Princess said, throwing herself into a wicker chair by the side of Jeanne's table. "I am afraid that all that I said must have sounded very cruel and abrupt. You see I have had this thing on my mind for so long. It has been a trouble to me, Jeanne."

Jeanne raised her large eyes and looked steadily at her stepmother. She felt almost ashamed of her coldness and lack of sympathy. The Princess was certainly looking worn and worried.

"I am sorry," Jeanne said stiffly. "I cannot imagine how you could have supported life for a day under such conditions."

Her stepmother sighed.

"That," she said, "is because you have had so little experience of life, and you do not understand its practical necessities. Children like you seem to think that the commonplace necessaries of life drop into our laps as a matter of course, or that they are a sort of gift from Heaven to the deserving. As a matter of fact," the Princess continued, "nothing of the sort happens. Life is often a very cruel and a very difficult thing. We are given tastes, and no means to gratify them. How could I, for instance, face life as a lodging-house keeper, or at best as a sort of companion to some ill-tempered old harridan, who would probably only employ me to have some one to bully? You yourself, Jeanne, are fond of luxuries."

It was a new reflection to Jeanne. She became suddenly thoughtful.

"I have noticed your tastes," the Princess continued. "You would be miserable in anything but silk stockings, wouldn't you? And your ideas of lingerie are quite in accord with the ideas of the modern young woman of wealth. You fill your rooms with flowers. You buy expensive books," she added, taking up for a moment a volume of De Ronsard, bound in green vellum, with uncut edges. "Your tastes in eating and drinking, too," she continued, "are a little on the sybaritic side. Have you realized what it will mean to give all these things up--to wear coa.r.s.e clothes, to eat coa.r.s.e food, to get your books from a cheap library, and look at other people's flowers?"

Jeanne frowned. The idea was certainly not pleasing.

"It will be bad for you," the Princess continued, "and it will be very much worse for me, because I have been used to these things all my life. You may think me very brutal at having tried to help you toward the only means of escape for either of us, but I think, dear, you scarcely realize the alternative. It is not only what you condemn yourself to. Remember that you inflict the same punishment on me."

"It is not I who do anything," Jeanne said. "It is you who have brought this upon both of us. All this money that has been spent upon luxuries, it was absurd. If I was not rich I did not need them. I think that it was more than absurd. It was cruel."

The Princess produced a few inches of lace-bordered cambric. A glance at Jeanne's face showed her that the child had developed a new side to her character. There was something pitiless about the straightened mouth, and the cold questioning eyes.

"Jeanne," the Princess said, "you are a fool. Some day you will understand how great a one. I only trust that it may not be too late.

The Count de Brensault may not be everything that is to be desired in a husband, but the world is full of more attractive people who would be glad to become your slaves. You will live mostly abroad, and let me a.s.sure you that marriage there is the road to liberty. You have it in your power to save yourself and me from poverty. Make a little sacrifice, Jeanne, if indeed it is a sacrifice. Later on you will be glad of it. If you persist in this unreasonable att.i.tude, I really do not know what will become of us."

Jeanne turned her head, but she did not respond in the least to the Princess' softened tone. There was a note of finality about her words, too. She spoke as one who had weighed this matter and made up her mind.

"If there was no other man in the world," she said, "or no other way of avoiding starvation, I would not marry the Count de Brensault."

The Princess rose slowly to her feet.

"Very well," she said, "that ends the matter, of course. I hope you will always remember that it is you who are responsible for anything that may happen now. You had better," she continued, "leave off writing letters which will certainly never be posted, and get your clothes together. We shall go abroad at the latest to-morrow afternoon."